Reality was blood and steel. Fire. Reality was bad people doing bad things and good people burying their heads while it happened. No, Carrie told herself. The ones burying their heads weren’t the good people at all.
Good people have scars. Good people are weary of the fight. Good people know they’ll eventually get fed into the threshing machine, but goddamn it, they aren’t backing down. Most of the good people died a long time ago, leaving the rest of us on our own. We’re just the ones who got left behind, compelled to go on as long and hard as we can, until the abyss takes us, too.
* * *
Carrie stood at the front door and knocked, leaning her forehead against the glass and cupping her hands to see inside. Only shadows could be seen behind the small windows built into the front door. She knocked again and called out, “Hello? You guys home?”
A thick, clotted cough came from deep inside the house. Carrie could see the form of a small woman shuffling toward the door. “Hang on,” and then, another cough.
Carrie stepped back, holding the screen open as the knob twisted. An older woman appeared from behind the door, her brown, tanning-bed-enriched skin looking like the underside of a wrinkled brown paper bag. Penny looked a hundred years older than the day her daughter, Molly, died. No, Carrie thought. Older than that. An unlit cigarette dangled from Penny’s lips, leaving bright red lipstick stains on its white filter. “I thought you were away.”
“I just got back,” Carrie said, moving past her into the house.
“How many times do I have to tell you to use your key?”
“How many times do I have to tell you to use the deadbolt and chain?”
Penny rolled her eyes, then jerked her head back in surprise as Carrie’s hand flicked forward, snatching the cigarette out of her mouth. Carrie held it up, between them both. “You promised you’d quit.”
Penny snatched it back, breaking it at the center. She tucked it back between her lips. “I did quit. It’s not lit, is it?”
Carrie’s eyes narrowed. “That’s not going to help you.”
“I don’t do it because I like cigarettes,” Penny said, tapping Carrie on the arm and whispering, “I got one of them oral fixations.”
Carrie cringed, unable to stop herself from laughing. “You’re a dirty old woman, you know that?”
“You’ll get there, kid. You hungry?”
“Starving.”
Penny retreated into the kitchen, saying, “Well, go on up then. We both know I’m not who you came for, anyway.”
“That’s not true,” Carrie said, peering around the corner. “I came to see you, too. Because I figured you’d be cooking.” She flashed a smile and turned, making her way up the stairs, slow and deliberate, using just the ledge of each step to keep it from squeaking. She could hear a little girl singing from inside the first bedroom. The door was shut just enough to let Carrie come up the steps past it and lean along the wall, looking in. Nubs was brushing the long blond hair of one of her dolls and singing to it. Beside her was a long line of other dolls, ones Carrie had bought over the past year, all of them with neatly, newly brushed hair.
The bedroom was filled with toys, stuffed animals, and so many books they had to be stacked alongside the bookshelves that were too full to hold anything else. It was a little girl’s room, full of hearts and rainbows, and it made Carrie laugh to think of how differently it looked now.
As a young teenager, when she’d first met Molly, the room was covered in posters for punk bands and cut-out pictures from magazines of all the famous people Molly thought were hot. She’d loved candles and painted skulls and tarot cards and anything she could find that looked Goth. The only normal thing Molly had was a bright blue vase she kept on her desk that was never filled with flowers. It was where she hid her pot.
By the time Carrie moved in with Molly and Penny, the room hadn’t changed much. The only new additions were a few 45-rpm records they’d bought at True Vinyl, the store they both worked at after school. They’d pinned the records to the wall to display them, and even now, Carrie could see the faded outlines where they’d hung. The records were long gone. She’d have given almost anything to have them back. Songs she and Molly would listen to for hours and feel so deeply. Even when they weren’t high.
When Molly got pregnant, the two of them had stripped the room down to the bed frame and bare walls. They had cleaned it on their hands and knees and built Nubs’s crib together in the center of the empty room.
After Molly died, Carrie had stripped the room down once more. She’d done it alone, sending Penny and Nubs out for the day, while she’d cleaned, and cried, and boxed up every reminder of her beloved friend. She kept some T-shirts for herself. She saved the rest for when Nubs was old enough to wear them. By the time they came back, Carrie presented Nubs with her brand-new, private personal bedroom. The only reminder was a framed photograph of Molly holding Nubs, hanging in the center of the wall.
Penny had stood on the porch hugging Carrie that night for half an hour, sobbing into Carrie’s shoulder, and Carrie cried with her.
She knocked softly on the door. Nubs stopped singing and looked up from her doll, the smile wide and brilliant across her face. “I like your song,” Carrie said, coming into the room. She sat down on the floor across from the little girl, picked up one of the dolls, and felt its hair. “You did a great job on these. They look beautiful.”
“Do you want me to brush yours?” Nubs asked, holding up her plastic brush.
“Of course!” Carrie said, then paused. “Hang on,” she said, reaching for the sides of Nubs’s face. “Do I see a new missing tooth in there?”
Nubs opened her mouth and pointed to an empty space in her gum. “It came out yesterday.”
Carrie’s eyes widened. “Did you lose it in a fight?”
Nubs stifled a laugh. “No, it just came out, the same as the others.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think you’re supposed to lose that many baby teeth so soon. You must be growing up super fast or something. Here, stand up and let me look at you.” Carrie gasped as Nubs stood up. “I think you are twice as big as before. You must be going to bed on time and eating all your vegetables. That’s the only explanation.”
“Except brussels sprouts,” Nubs said, making a face.
“Well, duh,” Carrie said, wrapping her arms around Nubs and pulling her in for a long embrace. “Nobody likes them until they turn into an old person.”
“Do you like them?”
Carrie sighed and said, “God help me, I’m starting to.”
* * *
By evening, empty plates and bowls were scattered across the table. Penny’s thick, homemade sauce was smeared across their rims and stained on the napkins stuffed inside the empty drinking glasses. Penny sipped the last of her wine, her left hand outstretched, stroking Carrie’s hair the way she’d done it over the years whenever there had been trouble. They didn’t talk about it. There was never a need to.
Nubs was nestled against Carrie’s side, the little girl’s head resting on the curve of her breast. She was scratching Nubs’s back with her nails, making the child giggle whenever she went too high, up onto the delicate skin of her neck. The TV was on. Something Nubs wanted to watch. Carrie’s feet were up on the table, resting. It was good. And it was safe. She fell asleep.
IV
WHERE WERE YOU?
CHAPTER 18
J.D. looked for Hope in the halls, and he waited for her at her locker, but she never came. At the last bell, he hurried to the exit, standing off to the side. He pressed himself up on the tips of his toes, trying to see over the heads of the first wave of kids rushing toward the exit. She wasn’t there. He waited.
Within seconds, the hallway was filled. Everyone was running and pushing to get through the doors. They raced down the steps toward their buses, and it was all J.D. could do to keep from being dragged down the steps with them. He felt a tug on his arm and spun around, his face broadening into a smile that froze wh
en realized it wasn’t her. Adam pressed his inhaler between his lips and took a deep breath, holding it in his chest before releasing it slowly. “What are you standing around for? The bus is getting ready to leave.”
“Not yet,” J.D. said.
Adam peered through the door, searching for Fred Eubanks or the rest of his group. “There’s nobody out there. We’re safe.”
“I can’t leave yet. Go on without me if you want.”
Adam leaned against the wall next to him, folding his arms across his chest. “What are we waiting for?”
“Did you see Hope today?”
“Not that I remember. Was she here?”
“She should have been.”
“What’s the big deal?” Adam asked. “Maybe she stayed home sick, or her parents picked her up, or something.” He pushed the door open. “Come on, we have to get going or we won’t be able to sit together.”
They fell in behind the rest of the stragglers running for the buses. Some of the drivers were already closing their doors, ignoring the kids shouting at them and waving their arms. Adam sucked wind as he ran, trying to catch a decent breath. J.D. was lagging behind, running with his head turned, looking back at the exit.
“Come on!” Adam wheezed, smacking J.D. on the arm. “Your girlfriend’s fine. We have to go!”
“Yeah,” J.D. said. “Probably right.”
Adam jerked his thumb at the bus. “Race you.”
J.D. flew past his friend, making it up the steps to the bus and blocking the doors before they could close. Adam’s glasses were cockeyed and his lungs sounded like a clogged drain by the time he reached the bus. J.D. pulled him up the steps and out of the way as the doors hissed closed. Adam bent over, hands on his knees, gasping for air. “I almost got you that time,” he said, pulling his inhaler out of his pocket and sticking it in his mouth. “You’re just lucky I went easy on you.”
They found an empty seat toward the back. J.D. slid in first, his eyes staying on the school, wanting to see Hope come busting through the exit. He could see her so clearly in his mind that he wanted to jump up and cry, “Wait!” If the bus driver tried to keep going, he saw himself grabbing the wheel and wresting it out of the man’s hands, or leaping through the doors as it sped off, doing whatever it took to let her know he’d waited for her. Instead, the school’s doors stayed closed. The bus rumbled and hissed and drove off.
Adam unzipped his schoolbag and pulled out a dog-eared copy of Starlog Magazine with a Klingon on the cover. “Do you want this? It’s from last month, but I’m done with it.”
“I already read it at your house,” J.D. said, still looking at the school.
Adam pulled out a copy of Mad Magazine, shaking his head at the drawing of Alfred E. Neuman as Yoda on the cover. “Did you read this one yet? They do Empire Strikes Back. It’s kind of funny.”
“Yeah, it was okay.”
Adam flipped open the Mad Magazine and looked through the pages. “I have so many Star Wars proof of purchases saved, they better do another mail-in offer when they do the next movie. Do you think they’ll do the third movie soon?”
“I guess,” J.D. said.
“I know they will,” Adam said. “I can feel it in my bones. Do you know how many proof of purchases it cost to get Boba Fett?”
“Four,” J.D. said.
“Just four measly proof of purchases!” Adam cried, shaking his fists in frustration. “I had so many more than that, and my stupid mom threw them all out before I could send them in! I had enough to get one for both of us.”
The proofs of purchase were medallions printed on the cardboard backing of each Star Wars figure, at the bottom. J.D. had seen Adam’s stack of the cardboard backings with the medallions. They were wrapped together with a rubber band, hidden under his dresser.
“I wonder what the new figure will be. Maybe another bounty hunter. Or maybe even a ship, if you send in enough. Or maybe,” Adam said, eyes glittering, “The new Jedi.”
“Maybe,” J.D. said. He should have figured out Hope wasn’t at school earlier. That way he could have gone to her teachers and asked for her homework for that night. He could have gone to her house and handed it to her mom or dad, and made a good impression on them, even if she was too sick to come downstairs. She’d know he’d been the one to bring it. Maybe she’d come to her bedroom window and wave to him as he walked away from her house. He could picture her in that window, framed by the afternoon fading light, smiling down at him.
“I bet it’s Luke’s brother. That has to be who Yoda meant,” Adam continued. “A secret brother. Or uncle. At first I thought it might be Obi-Wan’s son, but then it wouldn’t make sense for Yoda to tell him there is another, right? Because Obi-Wan would already—” Adam had to pause, stuffing his hand into his pocket and pulling out his inhaler to take another stiff dose. He waited, forcing himself to slow down, then said, “Obi-Wan would already know he had a son. Do you think the new Jedi will be more powerful than Luke? What color lightsaber do you think he will have?”
J.D. shrugged, no longer listening. Something was eating at his insides. A feeling he recognized but was not experienced with enough yet to understand. He’d felt it before. Around his father, mainly. Those were the times he’d locked himself in his room and slid his dresser in front of the door, before the screaming and crashing began. He’d sensed it the way a dog senses a storm before any rain clouds form on the horizon. They can smell ozone in the air. The feeling was always strong but it was not always true.
In the years to come, when his wife came home late and didn’t call, or when he dropped his son off at school, or heard news about some mysterious illness that left people disfigured or changed irrevocably, the feeling was there. A sense of impending doom. That the cruel hand of fate was hovering over you all the time, ready to snatch away whatever you held dear.
As an adult, he’d tell himself it was just fear, born of so many years of delivering death notifications to unsuspecting families, or investigating violent crimes, or seeing the things he’d seen and could never unsee. He’d tell himself it was no different for surgeons, who cut people open for a living. Who could look at a human being and visualize exactly what innards and organs were jumbled together just below the surface.
Many years later, after he’d spent a lifetime looking below the surface of existence itself and seen what was writhing there, any other way of viewing the world would be stolen from him. He’d learn to live in never-ending dread. But back then, as a boy of twelve, watching the houses and fields and familiar trees along his bus route home, on a pleasant day of calm weather and bright sun, he found himself deep in the throes of that sickening feeling. It was still new enough that he listened to it.
J.D. hopped down from the bus at his stop and hoisted his schoolbag over both shoulders, securing it in place. He’d be able to move faster without it, and his house was just at the end of the street. But as he turned and looked down the road, he decided it would take too long and started to run.
He was sweating through his jacket and huffing for breath by the time he reached Hope’s street. He bent forward, trying to catch his breath, wondering if this was how Adam felt every time he reached for his inhaler. J.D. stood up, smearing a sheet of sweat from his forehead onto his coat sleeve. He’d made it in half the usual time. The sun was still shining. As he stood up, attempting to make himself presentable, he stopped at the sight of something both familiar and horrifying. His uncle’s police cruiser, with the light bar on top and the faded Patterson Police insignia on the side, was parked in the Pughs’ driveway.
Ollie Rein came out of their front door as J.D. raced up the sidewalk. It took the chief a second to realize who was shouting at him. “Uncle Ollie! What’s happening! Is everything all right?”
Ollie hurried down the steps, catching the boy before he could run into the house. “Hang on a second, just wait. What are you doing here?”
J.D. gulped for breath. “Hope wasn’t in school today. I came to see w
hat was going on. What’s wrong? Is she okay?”
Ollie looked up at the house and his face darkened. He turned back to J.D. and lowered his voice. “Is Hope the girl you were telling me about last night?”
“Yeah,” J.D. said.
“The one you wanted to go see?”
When J.D. nodded, Ollie snatched him by the shirt collar and dragged the boy down the driveway, taking him away from the front of the house and out of earshot. J.D. grimaced in fear as his uncle lowered his face toward his, growling, “You’d better tell me every goddamn thing, right now. What do you know about this?”
“About what?” J.D. cried.
“She’s been missing since last night! So help me God, if you know where she is or what happened to her, you’d better tell me right now. This is not playtime, J.D.!” Ollie wrenched him forward, shouting, “Where is she?!”
“I don’t know!” J.D. shouted back, tears spilling down his face. He clawed at his uncle’s fingers and kicked him in the shins through his thin police pants, shouting, “Get off me! I have to go look for her! Let go!”
“Look at me,” Ollie said, shaking him. “I’m not kidding, you better look at me. Did you leave my house last night?”
“No,” J.D. said, swallowing hard and wiping his eyes.
“I swear to you I will know if you’re lying. Did you leave my house last night?”
“No. I didn’t leave your house last night, Uncle Ollie.”
“All right,” Ollie said, letting go. The boy’s shirt collar was stretched out of shape and hung loose around his neck, revealing the red marks where it had been twisted around his skin. Ollie laid both his hands on J.D.’s shoulders. “Listen, I just had to be sure.”
“Sure about what?” J.D. said, pushing Ollie’s hands away.
“Sure you don’t know anything about this. What do you think her parents would say? They’d think you had something to do with it, J.D. And here you go showing up the next day. Anybody who didn’t know you would think you were coming here trying to see how the investigation was going. That’s what bad guys do, J.D. They show up and say they want to help, but really, they just want to enjoy all the panic and turmoil they caused.”
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